Tourists top Bethlehem's wish list for holiday season

BETHLEHEM, WEST BANK — Bethlehem knows what it wants for Christmas: tourists.

All over Manger Square and the rest of town, shopkeepers, hotel owners and just plain folks are hoping that visitors come and stay--if only for a night.

Pilgrims are the primary source of income in Jesus Christ's traditional birthplace, and town leaders, while mourning Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, are encouraged by a lull in Israeli-Palestinian fighting since his death last month.

"We hope things will get better and pray every day for tourists to come back," said Nidal Dar El-Qurneh, a guide at the Church of the Nativity. "It's been so hard recently, especially the last four years of the intefadeh."

The intefadeh, or Palestinian uprising, has devastated tourism throughout the Holy Land, and occasionally the violence spilled into Bethlehem.

Israeli forces entered the town of 40,000 in the spring of 2002 in a West Bank-wide sweep following a string of bloody suicide bombings. The soldiers encircled the Church of the Nativity after Palestinian gunmen fled inside, mounting a five-week siege that left bullet holes in the 4th-Century shrine.

Christmas celebrations here once attracted tens of thousands of tourists. Bethlehem Mayor Hanna Nasser said 120,000 tourists used to visit every month. Now the number is about 10,000.

Unfortunately, it won't look a lot like Christmas, Nasser said.

"Because of the death of Yasser Arafat there are no Christmas decorations," he said. "We are still in a mourning period."